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I dedicate these words to the Highest Good of Everyone and Everything, and to the Supreme Truth That Is Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent.

Hallelujah :-)

Mmm…well after starting this post out like that it seems like anymore words are excessive! Alas, a fairly traumatic experienced ‘happened to me’ this morning and me thinks there are likely an abundance of lessons to be learned from it.

The key word that pops out: Remember.

And secondly: One thing at a time. Single-handle. Take nothing for granted. There are no guarantees beyond this present moment.

(So now is probably a good the best time ever to pray, think good thoughts, meditate, know God, etc.)

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Here’s what happened.

Thursday afternoon, this body put a hose in a pond to fill it up with water. Generally, the pond takes 1-2 hours to fill. So, the thought was this body would return in 1-2 hours to turn off the hose.

Friday morning, sitting in meditation, suddenly this mind/body remembers about the hose in the pond and the running water. The first instinct was to jump up and run over to the pond to check on the pond and the fish. Despite the imagined horror of a flooded pond and fish out of the pond sitting dead on the grass surrounding the pond, i resisted the initial instinct and thought that whatever damage was done was done and there was no ‘urgency’ to act. The thought also passed that this was the perfect opportunity to practice meditation as the mind began to seriously feel disturbed and wander and speculate, etc.

While sitting in meditation, the traditional method for meditation left, and what seemed way more appropriate was intense prayer. Feelings of sorrow and sadness overcame the mind/body, as well as compassion for the suffering of the fish and also the swamis at the monastery who had likely experienced the gruesome scene of dead fish. I thought that these feelings could not be serving any good, so instead i shifted mental focus to being grateful for all kinds of things in Life and in the wonderful Creation.

These ‘gratitude exercises’ lasted for a few minutes, and generated some better feelings, but alas the image of dead fish everywhere kept coming back to mind, and eventually this body jumped up from meditation and walked over to the pond.

Upon arriving at the pond, i first noticed that the water had been turned off, and that the area didn’t appear to be flooded. I then had the great gift of seeing many fish, alive and swimming in the pond. Ah, what a relief. Yet, feelings of guilt and failure still ripped, and prayer continued to seem like the appropriate response.\

This mind/body stood over the pond for a while, praying for the fish and for the swamis who likely prevented the mass death of fish from occurring.

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Anyway, despite the actual death of the fish being postponed, this mind/body still feels strongly shaken from the experience and not quite sure how is appropriate to live henceforth. In many ways, i still feel like the catalyst for a genocide of fish, which would have also likely led to huge ripples of anxiety / stress / agony throughout the monastery, amongst the swamis, and throughout the entire ashram.

So, what is to really learn from this experience?

1. Certainly it is a reminder of human fallibility. No human being is perfect and all humans are susceptible to errors.

2. On a practical level, it makes sense to have a watch and set an alarm with a reminder. And / or, write down the task on a note and put it in a pocket. But really, with time-sensitive issues, an alarm seems nearly necessary. Yet, perhaps the more spiritual solution is simply do one thing at a time. Instead of turning on the water and leaving with plans to come back, simply sit with the water running for an hour. If you don’t have an hour to give the fish, is it really worth it to leave and risk forgetting about them or being dragged on another adventure, only returning to see all the fish dead?

3. Realize the magnitude of what you do. Sure, filling a pond with water seems like no big deal. But, what if the pond floods and all the fish float out of the pond and end up on the grass, dead? Life or death are much closer than we sometimes think. This reminds me of the Taoist teaching about water. Water is simultaneously the most peaceful and most destructive force. It supports all life in moderation, but in excess it destroys like none other. Consider the difference between drinking a glass of water verses a hurricane hitting your home.

4. Reflecting on the above, perhaps a great lesson here is the difference between abundance/moderation and excess. A Course in Miracles says, “The truth is always abundant.” In this way, abundance is always a positive quality. Excess is abundance’s step-cousin who is just a bit twisted. So, this event reminds me to live life abundantly, not excessively. Which certainly mirrors this mind/body’s approach to food on Thursday…it was a bit excessive…so no wonder i’d have this semi-traumatic wake up call.

5. You never know when is the last time that you’ll see someone or something alive. So don’t take it for granted! Life is not meant to be taking for granted. Better than taking life for granted, why not cherish it? Why not treat all life as special, as sacred, as divine? What is holding us back from sharing Love with everyone and everything? What perpetuates our false sense of separateness? What excuses do we make for not loving that which is before us, Here and Now in the only Moment that ever is Real?

6. Last night, upon going to sleep, i remember feeling really good/proud about the amount of ‘sadhana’ practiced that day. 1.5 hours of meditation, 30 minutes hatha, 60 minutes pranayama, service, etc. But, what would all that sadhana amount too if it turns out i was also largely responsibly for the death of a whole bunch of fish? So let us remember what really matters. It’s not about how long you sit in meditation or how much so-called ‘spiritual practice’ you perform. It seems like what really matters is how we care for all of life, including humans, animals, insects, and our own physical bodies. From my experience, nothing seems to cause more sadness / grief / sorrow / depression than the idea that one is responsible for the death of another, or even many. I do not recall a time when i’ve felt more ‘down’ than this morning in meditation, considering all the death i was responsible for. Peace reveals Itself when we live a fully integrated, loving life, doing and being everything we can be, each moment, with full Love and Gratitude, appreciating and cherishing all life, equally and in all conditions. When we live in support of all life, consciously knowing that we’re doing the best we can, we only realize Peace. Peace is natural when we know we are doing our very best, instead of making excuses to be less than our best and make the same mistake over again, pretending we haven’t yet learned the lesson.

7. As i’ve been learning from A Course in Miracles, forgiveness is nothing without correction. Forgiveness without correction is just judgment. So, when and if we embrace forgiveness, it demands correction. Otherwise, what’s the point? Sure, we can ask for forgiveness over and over again each day for the same thing, but would any human being or God want that for us? For years now, i’ve been making the same mistake over and over again – excessively indulging and overfeeding the body, giving the body way more than it needs and more than is best for its optimal health and flourishing. And this excessive indulgence/ lack of moderation with food likely ripples out to all dimensions of life. Like, this blog post – for example – might very well be excessive in words, yet…oh well ;-) And, speaking from personal experience, making this same mistake over again does stir a bit of pain every time – both emotional, mental, and sometimes physical. So why keep doing it? When will i truly accept the forgiveness and embrace the learning and growth? Satchidananda mentions that we really only ‘drop the coal’ when it is truly too hot for us to hold. In this sense, the pain has not necessarily been ‘too much to handle’ just yet, but am i really asking to be responsible for the death of a bunch of fish before i finally ‘drop the coal’?

To share a bit…earlier this morning during meditation, when i thought myself the assured murderer of a bunch of fish…i was thinking about all the things i was going to change in my life and what was the best course of action to take. i thought i might give away all my stuff, or at least give away the stuff that at one point another i took without asking…i thought i might go join a monastic order (not necessarily this one because i thought they’d want me to leave the ashram, reasonably so too)…i thought i’d quit the job i’m in and leave yogaville…i thought i’d fast for a long time…

And now that the crisis has somewhat been averted, i wonder how it will really change the way this mind/body lives in the world. What will it prioritize? Will it still value excessive indulgence more than conversation with people? Will it still put its own nourishment before the welfare of all?

(Hehe…i write this as the body is now calling to go the bathroom…yet the flow experience is so precious! Ah, perhaps another wake up call to consume in moderation instead of chugging a liter of water in the morning. Sip, sip, sip. Moderation, moderation, moderation. Alas, be right back!)

Ah, that feels better. But yes – why do we keep binding ourselves? When will we finally let go of our attachments and false sense of obligation? In Reality, our only obligation is to God, the Truth that resides Within and Beyond. Nothing else really matters. And sure, i write this, but then i go chugging liters of water like that’s some great act, when meanwhile it then binds the body to the need to go to the bathroom, which might quite unexpectedly drag it away from a Perfect Present Moment and a wonderful opportunity to Love and Give and Serve.

What stops us from loving more abundantly? Is it our attachment to food? to people? to books? to television and mass media? Maybe it could even be an attachment to our spiritual practice.

What is holding you back from realizing God more fully in every moment of Life?

For me, attachment to certain ideas/dogma seems to be a culprit. Like the attachment to the idea of ‘hydration,’ to the idea of ‘not letting healthy food go to waste,’ to the idea of ‘acquiring spiritual knowledge through reading books,’ to the idea of ‘exercising/practicing hatha yoga before eating anything in the morning,’ to the idea of ‘vitamins first thing in the morning.’

Ha, funny looking at the list above, noticing that virtually of the attachments listed are relating to caring for the physical mind/body.

Which reminds me of perhaps the greatest teaching of the Bhagavad Gita about letting go of body-identification and realizing Self as Spirit.

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And back to the fish.

Walking over to the pond this morning, part of me thought that the small-self-i wasn’t really the one responsible so much as collectively, the death of the fish was the result of the collective consciousness, thereby serving as a wake up call for us all to become more conscious and aware and glean whatever lesson is most applicable to us at the time. No man, is an island, after all. In many ways, individual responsibility is really collective responsibility, and one person’s pain affects all people. Why is this? Perhaps, as Nisargadatta Maharaj says, “You are not a person.”

We are more than human beings. We are more like…consciousness! One with the Whole, connected with All, Spiritual, even One with the Creator.

The more we remember our level of connectedness with all and our oneness, the more we embrace individual responsibility more and more, down to caring for the quality of every single thought, because we realize the creative power in thought. As a Course in Miracles teaches, changing the behavior of a human body isn’t so much the issue as it is changing the thoughts, because everything starts in thought. Behaviors don’t happen by themselves – the seeds of every behavior are in a thought. So it’s significant that we train the mind and elevate the quality of our thinking so that we continue to consciously will the Kingdom of Heaven before we go unconsciously willing this and that and the other.

The clearer we discover what Heaven is like, the more we realize Heaven. To mention again, the truth is always abundant, not excessive! In many ways, abundance is moderation. Abundance is more than enough for everyone, and the best way to treat abundance is in perfect moderation, so that whatever it is, it is thoroughly enjoyed. When abundance tips to excess is when over-indulgence and greed and lust and anger and everything else negative starts occurring.

When we truly love Creation and truly love our mind/body, we treat it abundantly. We feed it abundantly, just the right amount for it feel as good as it can. We hydrate it abundantly, just enough so that it does not feel thirsty. We cultivate relationships abundantly, just enough so that we do not over-extend ourselves and feel bound to so many people and feel obligated to talk with everyone. The life of abundance is a free life, a moderate life, a balanced life, a life of truly listening to the calling of the Present Moment.

As a friend shared with me the other day, the foundation of Ayurveda is, “Wake up early and poop in the morning.” He continued, “Eat when hungry and drink when thirsty.” Why do we not trust the ability for the body/mind to communicate needs of hunger and thirst, and instead we feed it when it doesn’t ask for it and we hydrate it when it is really doing just fine? In so many ways, less is more. And, on a very practical level, giving the body less to consume allows the organs more time to rest and relax. And, systematic undereating is supposedly the only consistently proven method to increasing longevity. So, if you want to live longer, eat less! Give those organs a rest.

As much as the method of eating ‘just enough’ might sound like some sort of austerity, it is really about eating ‘just enough’ that is best for the flourishing of mind/body. Anything consumed by the body ideally raises the level of consciousness and awareness, and definitely never lowers it!

Moreover, let us remember our truest and highest responsibilities, live in balance and moderation, see God and God’s Will in All, and surrrender our personal will to Divine Will so that we more fully realize Supreme Love and Peace in every moment of Life.

From experience, some of the moments of greatest pain come from exerting personal will to defy what another asks ‘me’ to do, thereby resisting ‘God’s Will.’ Or…perhaps it is that God’s Will is that we realize Love and Peace every moment, so whenever we allow anything to disturb that connection with and as Love and Peace, we are resisting God’s Will. God’s Will might just be being Supremely Present.

As the sign in Vegas says, “You must be present to win!”

How are we to ever ‘win’ if we keep binding ourselves by all these obligations in the fictitious future? Let us surrender more and more to the Divine Moment in which God abides eternally. Let us let Love lead the way! Instead of focusing on acquiring and possessing, let us just focus on Loving and Being Love and Peace and bringing Love and Peace wherever we go :-)

Of course, if you are going to engage in worldly affairs where wearing a watch and setting an alarm would help you, please do that! Just, remain connected with the Peace and Love. And, actually, wearing a watch and setting an alarm, relating to the whole fish experience, is a perfect example of the usefulness of material objects. Nothing is bad about ‘having’ things, it’s only when ‘things have us’ and we become attached to them that is the ‘problem.’ By all means, have that which is useful to you. Embrace usefulness! If it’s not useful, then it is excessive and you can do without it and might actually be much better without it. When we possess ‘excess,’ it seems a very natural response that feelings of guilt arise. Why possess more than we need? Excess only burdens us.

The Truth is always abundant. – A Course in Miracles

Hallelujah :-)

Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

So grateful for forgiveness…forgiveness that leads to correction…to live in moderation, abundantly, refraining from excess and indulgence, and embracing the usefuleness of worldly things.

You might be thinking, “Well, perhaps i already know God. What are some signs that i don’t know God?”

If you find yourself experiencing anger, fear, sorrow, or cravings/aversions, in those instances, you’re likely out of touch with knowledge of God. However, if in these instances of experiencing some sort of negativity, you shift yourself to the witnessing state, that is you simply watch the negative experience/sensation without judging it, then you are once again moving closer to the Lord.

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Meanwhile, what are some ways of aspiring to knowledge of God?

–> Dedicate every action to God. Whatever you do, simply say before you do it, “I dedicate this to Thee, O Lord God.” You can also dedicate whatever you do to the Highest Good of All, which is a similar, powerful dedication. This act of dedication generally helps to purify whatever activity we’re undertaking. As you can imagine, it’s very difficult to dedicate acts of abuse, addiction, gambling, violence, etc., to God. And, thank God for that :-)

–> Forgive everyone and everything. Let go of all resentment against others and all sense of guilt against yourself. Forgiving frees us from the past and opens us to the perfection of the Present, where God eternally abides :-)

–> Be kind to everyone and everything, without exception.

–> Eat mild foods, in a moderate amount, at a moderate pace. Nourish the body well. Feed it healthy, whole foods, and of course – dedicate the food to the Lord and to the Highest Good of All :-) Enjoy food with a feeling of gratitude in the heart. Understand the food as a Divine Gift and as nourishment for the mind/body so that it may continue to grow closer and closer to God and serve the Highest Good of All.

–> Speak only that which is true, beneficial, and pleasant. Before you speak, ask – is it true? Is it beneficial? Is it pleasant? If it does meet these criteria – forget about it. Less is more.

–> Intend to know God and intend to see God in everyone and everything, and express gratitude for knowing and seeing God in All. Persistently set this intention and feel the gratitude for realizing the fulfillment of the intention in the Eternal Present where the Omnipresent One abides.

–> Stop. In particular, stop trying to control and change others. And, stop trying to save the world. Instead, mind your own business. The best way to serve the Highest Good of All is to know God and become enlightened. Set a healthy, happy, holy, heavenly example. Be the change you want to see in the world. Go to work on yourself! Baby steps. Patience, patience, patience. Stop thinking you know what’s best for anyone or anything, instead embrace all as God’s Will, and learn to see the Good in All. If you really feel something must change, turn the gaze within and change yourself. When you change your internal attitude, the external world changes too. As Shakespeare said, “Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

–> Practice stillness and silence, listening and relaxation. Give up multi-tasking. When you eat, eat. When you listen to music, listen to music. Allow yourself opportunities to simply sit and breathe and be. Maybe focus on someone who inspires you like Jesus or Buddha, or an uplifting word/feeling like Peace and Love.

–> Desire. To know God, desire God. Desire God more than anything else, so that ultimately nothing binds you. Be free from all desires except the desire to know God, and eventually you might just have to let that one go too ;-) Essentially, if God said, “You can know me if you stop drinking alcohol,” would you give it up? What if God said, “You can know me if you stop talking about other people and refrain from gossip,” would you do it? What if God said, “You can know me if you eat only fruits, vegetables, and drink only milk and water for the next 40 days,” would you do it? Not saying any of these measures are necessary to know God, but the point is we don’t want to be attached to anything. We want to be free from all material desires, including those desires that taste good to the tongue or inflate our ego.

–> As Joel O’Steen says at the end of his broadcasts, “Put God first in your life.” That will do the trick! Embrace the qualities of God as Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent. God is everywhere, present, totally knowing of all, including every single thought. So, embrace God in the Present :-) Give God a big smile! And, since God is omniscient and therefore aware of all thoughts, you might as well practice thinking positively, more and more, until positive, pure, good thoughts reign supreme in your mind. Really, just think of God – that’s a good thought to have :-)

–> Pray morning and evening. Express gratitude for all the gifts each day, and express gratitude for growing in awareness of the Presence of God. The ultimate way of realizing the classic affirmation, “Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better,” is to grow in awareness of God, Infinite Goodness and Divine Perfection, every day in every way.

–> Remember it’s all God’s Will. You can celebrate everything and anything. There is Good and God in All. Seek and ye shall find! Let go of attachments to judgments and opinions and labeling – God is taking care of it all. Leave any judgment to God. Surely, God knows :-)

–> Choose Love and Peace, moment to moment, every moment, always and forever! Choosing Love and choosing Peace is choosing God. As David R. Hawkins writes, “God is love and peace and nothing else.”

Creation is Divine! Nothing really needs to be changed. At the same time, things can change, but creation is always moving from completion to completion, from perfection to perfection. All is God’s Will, which is perfect, whole, complete, and infinitely good :-)

What we do with these human bodies and minds on a physical level doesn’t matter nearly as much as how we do whatever we do, and how we feel whenever we do what we do. The feeling matters! We serve wonderfully when we feel wonderful; we serve lovingly when we feel love and aware of Love. The joy is in the journey, not the destination. Peaceful ends are achieved by peaceful means.

Constantly dedicate and re-dedicate your life to the Highest Good of All, to the Highest Truth, to the Highest, Supreme, Reality. Align your Life fully with the Truth and the Good and surely you’ll know God too :-) Goodness leads to God. Trust your conscience and the Voice Within. Establish your Peace and act from there. Connect with the Highest in You, and then let go and Let Love. Allow, allow, allow. Resist nothing! “Resistance is futile.”

This moment is the most significant moment in your life. Cherish it! Cherish all this moment offers. Love everyone and everything present in this moment fully and completely, without conditions! This moment offers you everything that is perfect for you. In this moment, you can know the Supreme Truth of Reality, you can know Pure, Perfect Love in this moment, Absolute Joy, and in this moment you can know God :-)

If you drink too much, you are binding the body to the recurrent need to go to the bathroom.

If you feed the body too much or too little, the mind will either be so focused on acquiring more food, or all the energy in the body will be totally centered in digesting food and making the feelings of ‘being stuffed’ go away.

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In preparation to meet a spiritual master, would you drink a lot? would you eat a lot before?

No. You would eat and drink minimally, just to feel comfortable and meanwhile light and clear and calm, ready to receive a great teacher.

Plant a seed…one tiny little speck of dust practically…just plant a seed and wait. Water the seed, care for it, give it attention and love, and watch what happens. Slowly but surely, with daily maintenance, the seed sprouts and begins to grow. Day by day, bit by bit, the seed continues to reveal its hidden potential and grows onward and upward. Given enough time and energy, a tiny little seed can yield something as massive and grand as an oak tree. Who could ever believe such a tiny little seed, once sown and tended to, could return such a grand splendor of Creation?

Potential.

In the human realm, seeds are thoughts. Every thought we think is a seed we plant in the fertile soil of our subconscious mind, or you could say we are planting seeds in the collective, universal consciousness. Either way, every thought counts. They all add up!

Once we think one thought, the seed of that thought is planted. Returning to that thought is watering the seed and encouraging its growth, flourishing, and actualization of its potential.

One of the great human tasks is to consciously choose our thoughts, thereby choosing the seeds that we are planting and nourishing and realizing the experience of life we desire. If we simply let the thoughts go hither and thither without any conscious effort to guide the thoughts towards that which we desire, our experience will be just as dispersed. The more we focus all the thought energy we can muster, the more focused our lives become. The more we consciously choose thoughts of what we desire, the more we are honing the laser beam on a single point, giving all of our conscious attention to that point, and the more fully that focus will reveal itself more abundantly in all dimensions of our life.

Simple stated…know what you want and think about it constantly!

Constantly sow the seed of a single affirmation, such as “I am abiding in Peace,” and repeat it over and over again. Sure enough, Peace will become one of your dominant experiences in Reality. Not so bad, eh? ;-)

Just one tiny little seed…can grow so big. Focus on what you want!

What do you want to grow in your life? Plant the seed and water it often!

Step 2: Write it down. Look at what you wrote often. At least when you wake up in the morning and before you go to sleep. Also consider looking at it before and after mealtimes and before and after any time you meditate.

Step 3: Feel free to update and change the list of your wants/desires as often as you’d like. Just be sure to look at it often and carry the list on you! This action communicates that you are serious in your intention to fulfill these desires of yours. It is a small and simple yet incredibly powerful action – to carry a list of your major desires and look at it often.

Step 4: Continue, day by day, to carry the list, update it, and look at it often. Sure enough ,persistence and patience reap abundant returns. The list helps you to sow the thoughts that reap what you seek.

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Another acronym I’ve heard:

KFC:

K: Know what you want.

F: Find out what you’re getting.

C: Change what you’re doing until you get what you want.

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As The Sermon on the Mount says,

Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be open.

“It’s as marvelous and as simple as that.”

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Who knew life could be so easy?

Yet it requires great courage to look within to discern our true wants and desires. And as we refer to the list more and more continuously, it might facilitate massive changes in our lifestyle. Whenever these potential changes emerges, we must call upon even greater courage and willingness to make these changes, for our own greater good and the greater good of all!

What do you want so badly that you’re willing to remind yourself of it 12 times throughout the day? What do you want to badly that you’re willing to remind yourself of it every hour? Every 30 minutes? Every 15 minutes? When we dig deep within, we will discover those great, burning desires that are more than worthy of arising to the forefront of our consciousness not just every 15 minutes, but even every second – and that’s when we live the fully integrated life, in which is realized Eternal, Perfect, Infinite, Supreme Peace and Love.

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Other hot tips for manifesting your desires…

“Understand what you really want and begin to communicate.” Communicate, most significantly, to God and to your Heart of Hearts. You don’t have to go tell everyone in the world and all your social networks about your desires, but it is helpful to be at total peace with your list of wants and desires. That way, if someone were to get a hold of your list, you would retain your peace, and perhaps even be happy that another person is looking at your list.

With whatever desires, it’s important that we are at peace with it. We don’t want to feel ashamed or guilty ore fearful or angry about trying to manifest whatever we desire. Desire with purity, with an energy of Love and Peace and Joy and Gratitude. Desire that which is good for all! Desiring what is good and beneficial to all, even desiring what is best for all, allows you to be at total peace with your desires and with your striving to manifest. Pure desires facilitate fully integrating your life so that every waking moment of your life is aligned with manifesting your desires which are for the good of all :-) A simple way of summarizing this paragraph…Purify, Purify, Purify!

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Hallelujah!

With whatever you desire, be at total ease with the notion of sharing your desires with people who may be able to help you along the way, yet you don’t have to go proclaiming them on the top of the mountain. Sometimes talking lots about our desires can actually take away energy from them…as if all the talk energy we put into them satisfies our desire to actually experience them more fully. Kind of like writing this blog post…so maybe it is time to stop and just meditate :-)

One last thing – perhaps! – with whatever you desire, express gratitude for having already realized it fully. Be grateful for already having received it! Moreover, do your best to already experience the fullness of having realized the desire. Generate that ‘winning feeling’ internally, using the imagination if necessary. Really feel what it’s like to realize the fulfillment of these great, pure, desires of yours. This is a great way to meditate. After all, we are vibrational beings, and these bodies might just act like magnets – so when we realize the feeling internally, we are sending out /communicating that feeling externally, thereby attracting to us like energies that can help us realize the fulfillment of the desire on more than just the plane of our imagination. So…feel it in the heart! And surely, be grateful for it! “Give thanks in all circumstances!”

Knowledge of the True Self, what you might call God Realization, accompanied with mastery over the small self, that is the physical body and mind.

What part about the small self exactly requires/benefits from mastery? Those sensations and desires that draw us away from remembrance of our True Self / Eternal Relationship with God.

If our consciousness is consumed with thoughts about acquiring material possessions, building relationships with people, eating delicious foods, exercise, listening to music, etc. – any of these material world activities carry with them the potential to draw us away from consciousness of God. Of course, if we begin with Consciousness of God, then we can engage in any infinite variety of material world activities and experience Perfect Peace and Love all the while.

Mastery over the small self, self-mastery, generally consists of being conscious enough and willing to identify and delay short-term pleasure in exchange for long-term gratification. Small-self-mastery is essentially acting in alignment with the good of the long-term in mind. Small-self-mastery is the expression of abstaining from short-term pleasures that result in long-run negative consequences. One in the consciousness of self-mastery easily says no to activities like drug use and excessive alcohol consumption, overeating, engaging in gossip or frivolous small talk, entertaining negative thoughts and/or judgments, and any forms of selfish consumption, greed, lust, avarice, etc. The one who is self-mastered not only says no to negative indulgences on the physical plane, but also on the mental and emotional planes as well. A negative thought can be just as harmful if not more harmful than a supposed negative behavior like drug use. The one who is self-mastered refuses to make excuses for behavior and refuses to cast blame on others. The self-mastered accepts full responsibility and realizes the Power is Within to create any change desired. And, as already mentioned, the self-mastered values the long-term and the good of all above the short-run and the good of only the small self. The self-mastered acts universally, setting a worthy example for all to follow. The self-mastered also embraces the power to choose thoughts, and therefore chooses empowering thoughts and attitudes, such as those of lovingness, gratitude, kindness, compassion, gentleness, friendliness, service, generosity, and more.

Supposedly, the greatest human addiction is to sugar. And, likely more than one Spiritual Teacher has mentioned that a tremendous step to make along the spiritual path is to ‘Tame the tongue.’ When the tongue is tamed, that means one feeds the body only the healthiest food, in the healthiest proportion. Also, it means one speaks only that which is pleasant and beneficial for all to hear. Mastery over the tongue is so essential because it is a two-way portal; we put things into the body through the tongue, and it is a vehicle for expression. So anyway – eat well, speak well :-)

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Then, once we’ve got the small-self-mastery going on, it is much easier for us to realize the True Self, which is Eternal and Infinite and totally awesome and Supreme :-)

Mastery of the small self and sense cravings and selfish desires is key to realizing the True Self. If our consciousness is dwelling on wanting material things and experiences, how are we supposed to realize that which is Beyond the Beyond and that which is Pure Love and Peace, independent of all external conditions?]

So then, one step at a time, one sensation at a time, resolve to surrender the short-term pleasure for the long-term gain. For this body, personally, the key practice is moderation and portion control when it comes to eating. This also includes eating from a higher awareness, in the context of God and serving and loving All That Is. And, bringing as much gratitude to the experience as possible, as well as acknowledging the interconnectedness of All and realizing the food as a great gift, not to be taken for granted! Anyway, that’s probably enough sharing for today :-)

The key to growth is…baby steps! And contextualize all the growth in the light of your Highest Goal, which is ultimately the same for One and All, no matter what we may call it. Some may call it Unconditional Happiness, Perfect Peace, Infinite Love, All Abundance, Perfect Health, Eternal Life, God Realization…all are just words for the same ultimate experience which we seek, whether consciously or unconsciously. The funny thing about this seeking is that ultimately…we are that which we seek! So all we ever have to do is let go and let the Truth shine forth. Let go, let Love. Let go, Let God.

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On a side note…

Non-violence starts at home, that is with our physical bodies and minds.

and perhaps my new favorite quotation from Louise Hay…

“The point of power is the Present Moment!” Meaning, in the Present, we have the ability to choose our thoughts and release and overcome any and all past conditioning.